What is 'cinema'?

[emjen]

According to Peter Greenaway cinema has just been illustrated text for the past 100 years.

According to Hollywood it is movies with beautiful people, guns, romance, drugs, car chases and excitement.

Accoring to the folks of Cahiers du Cinema during the 1960's, it was um... i'd have to look it up. But they changed it towards something else anyway.

And then Hollywood changed it back again.

Anyways, even though I slightly agree with the statement that Cinema is the only art form that hasn't undergone any changes the past 100 years (it was stories then, it still is) I have to say that I find the essence of true cinema an amazing story about characters.

But one could say that about a book as well. So there's ambiguous point where I'd have to say that it SHOULD be offering more than just illustrated text.

Then again, paintings are still paint on canvas. That hasn't changed during the past thousands of years.

[miker]

for me, cinema is all about spectacle. suspend my disbelief and show me something to put me in awe, show me something i've never seen before.

yes, i think cinema is actually about the big screen and is about filling that screen with beautiful or antagonistic compositions which surround the story which is unfolding.

take away the screen and you have a 7.1 radio play.

put it on tv and the power and scale of spectacle is lost to the 7.1 radio play.

[Matty2phatty]

Actually a good friend of mine would always challenge me when i was writing a screenplay, in a similar way to the comment that cinema is just illustrated text.

She would always push me to be more artistic in the way i tell my story, saying "If you do that, you might as well be telling this story in a book".